Humans not Bots

In my opinion this is a known problem with Wordfence, it’s been going on forever it seems. When one thinks about it, really, how could the difference between a bot and a human _always_ be determined accurately, either by human or algorithm? With that in mind, I’d doubt Wordfence will improve on this any time soon. I’ve learned to ignore, though I still find those big garish bot icons to be quite annoying when they appear to be wrong. They appear childish, perhaps intended to impress new users of the software. MTN

I agree, I do wish WF would address this issue

I was thinking more along the lines of creating ‘honeypot’ which, upon hitting the site, would then redirect them back to where they originated.

That would no doubt annoy the host/ISP and spur them to stop the author of the bot.

Thanks for that ??

Hi @rik0399,
The bot/human detection in Wordfence functions like this: A JavaScript is loaded and if any events are triggered in the browser which would indicate the visitor is a human (scrolling, tapping, moving mouse etc) they are logged as a human, otherwise not. We are aware that there are situations where humans may visit the site without triggering those events. I believe the Facebook browser app doesn’t trigger them for example. If you turn off JavaScript in your browser, we also wouldn’t see that as a human.

Can you tell us a bit more about how you determined that these specific visitors were human? I’d be happy to add that information to our case related to this.

Thanks in advance!

Hi @wfasa,

Thanks for that, but here’s the thing…

I NEVER see (other than Admin) ANY Human icons in Live Traffic?

I know the site must be getting visitors but I can’t tell, at a glance, which is which as they are 99% Bot Icons?

Perhaps I have this setup incorrectly?

Regards

Hi @rik0399,

Wordfence uses various methods to detect if a visit should be classified as a bot or human. One of these methods includes a large list of IP blacklists. It’s possible your visitors are within these IP range blacklists.

Dave

Hi @wfdave,

Thanks for that,

Working on that analogy, 99% of visitors to my site are bots then?

I think that’s unlikely, even visitors who inadvertently on my site show still show, right?

No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that the IPs of your visitors are classified as bots.

If you’re using a mobile connection, the IP is shared by other people who might be running attacks on other WordPress sites. That would cause that IP to be blacklisted and everyone else who is on the same mobile network to be blacklisted.

If you or someone with the same internet service provider has had a botnet installed on their system, this would also cause their IP to get blacklisted.

Dave